Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Answer: The reporter and his editors still buy into the myth of false equivalence, that "both sides" are filled with extremists.

She shook her head at how “we’ve miniaturized the process in the United States Senate,” no longer allowing lawmakers to shape or change legislation and turning every vote into a take-it-or-leave-it showdown intended to embarrass the opposition...

Nope. Democrats don't turn every single vote into a take-it-or-leave-it showdown. Republicans do.

With the announcement by Ms. Snowe, the political center has all but given way in Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats who fashioned themselves as common-sense moderates stepping down or being booted out.

Nope. The "political center" is amply represented among leading Democrats in Congress. What there hasn't been, for years, is more than a few powerful left-of-center voices. What has "given way" is the right of center, and even the hard right. What we are left with are centrist/right centrist Democrats and Republicans on the lunatic rightwing fringe.

Christie Whitman, a former Republican governor of New Jersey and Environmental Protection Agency administrator, pointed to social issues as the core problem in the polarization of American politics.

Not quite. Social issues aren't the problem. The Republican insistence on forcing ludicrous social issues to the forefront of American politics - when we have very serious problems that need attending to - is what is causing the polarization.

Am I saying that Republicans are the sole cause of the problems this country is having? Absolutely not. The absence of genuinely serious liberals from the public discourse is as great, if not a greater problem. And related to that is the absence of a compelling, modern rhetoric of liberalism.

In other words, it's not just that Republicans for the past 30 plus years have become increasingly crazy. It's that no one in a position of power knows how to confront them, mock them, label their ideas as the dangerous idiocies that they are, and start to move them back to the margins.